A surge in teacher misconduct referrals has been “driven” by a spike in parents going directly to regulators with complaints, officials believe.
Reports submitted to the Teacher Regulation Agency (TRA) have leapt by more than 60 per cent in just 12 months, with the body receiving almost 1,700 in 2023-24 alone.
Newly published TRA accounts revealed it is still missing 52-week targets for hearings to be held – with accusers and defendants waiting almost two years for cases to conclude.
The documents noted there had been a “significant increase in the number of referrals”, with staff and legal costs rising to meet demand.
Record teacher misconduct hearing numbers
“The increase in referrals during 2023-24 has been largely driven by an increase in the number of referrals made by members of the public,” they explained.
Papers show the TRA’s misconduct unit assessed 1,684 reports last year, up from 1,038 in 2022-23. The figure is more than double those seen in 2021-22 (714) and 2020-21 (628).
The agency took no further action on 1,059 of the referrals “due to them not falling within its jurisdiction and/or not meeting the threshold of serious misconduct”.
In all, 244 hearings were held.
The accounts said: “This is the highest number of hearings that the TRA has delivered during a reporting year in its history, an 18 per cent increase from 2022-23 and a 64 per cent increase from 2021-22.”
Staff costs rose to £4.8 million as the number of full-time TRA employees jumped by 19 per cent to 96. This was done “largely to increase capacity to manage the agency’s misconduct caseload”.
Earlier this year, the Confederation of School Trusts warned a rise in complaints was “not sustainable” and putting “significant pressure on school leaders”.
It urged government to set up a “single front door” for parental complaints to ensure they are not investigated multiple times, with the TRA only able to accept referrals from schools themselves or the police.
Legal costs jump 70%
Legal fees also leapt almost 70 per cent to £7.2 million. This has helped reduce the number of older misconduct reports “that have been progressed following a case-to-answer decision by 49 per cent”.
In a bid to conclude more cases “within reasonable timescales”, the TRA said it is holding virtual hearings to cut waits and “streamlining activities and structure”.
“The agency’s teacher misconduct unit (TMU) has taken extensive steps to increase capacity to ensure the timely conclusion of cases, including building additional capacity and onboarding 83 new professional conduct panellists.
“TMU also successfully concluded a procurement exercise of seven new legal contracts to support investigation and case conclusion at hearing stage.”
… But waiting-time target missed again
Despite this, the TRA is still missing targets. It had aimed to conduct teacher misconduct hearings within 52 weeks from the date the referral was submitted.
However, waits lasted almost 103 weeks on average.
This represented a reduction when compared to the 113-week average seen in 2022-23 and ended a three-year run of worsening waiting times.
The TRA stressed that “increasing case numbers and disruption to its services caused by the pandemic…negatively affected” its performance.
This comes after a Schools Week investigation in May found two teachers had been waiting more than eight years for their misconduct cases to conclude.
Figures obtained through Freedom of Information also showed 31 per cent of the 1,042 active cases on the TRA’s books were first referred more than two years ago.
Such a toxic profession for the frontline classroom teachers on every level. The for these useless trust leaders to actually be in schools and supporting staff in the classroom with behaviour and ensuring they earn their overinflated salaries. Bring back the LEA leadership for the area schools (one LEA chief is cheaper than 6 or 7 MAT chiefs in an area) and put these overpromoted execs on a pastoral worker salary out and about actually dealing with issues rather than their reinventing the wheel strategising.
I think there needs to be some thought given to this rise in complaints; many parents/carers trust the school and their staff to do the best for their children, and a small minority are always against the school – and raise their children to be just as offensive. It is a shame – and us ruining our teaching assets. Some research around emerging societal influences is needed here.
Parents have lost faith in schools and school complaints. The education system is not effectively regulated only inspected. It decreases trust further that teachers complain about inspections and complain about complaints directly to regulators.
All regulators have to accept referrals from the public teachers shouldn’t be any different the standards appear to be pretty low the only cases I see go to hearings are teachers having relationships with pupils and some of those unbelievably remain teachers.
This conversation is really making me question how accountable teachers really are.
No one is saying the public shouldn’t be able to complain about a teacher, the issue is that it should be going internally first for the school to investigate or there should be enough evidence of misconduct.
The TRA is there to investigate misconduct and teacher incapability, not a parent angry at a teacher for following the school policies. A lot of the rise has been attributed to parents being unhappy about the teacher following school policies, effectively using it as a way to complain about school policies and not really the teacher. Thus, wasting TRA time and causing increased anxiety for the teacher whilst they wait for an outcome. The current system allows it to be weaponised by parents.
The TRA is not fit for purpose and it’s CEO is not fit to lead the organisation
£12m per annum to process referrals – the majority of which are from aggrieved parents who, not happy with a decision a school has taken, get their own back by making false vexatious accusations of teacher wrong doing.
In response to a FoIR – the TRA comfirmed that from over 1000 complaints from parents not one had resulted in formal action being taken against a teacher.
A simple solution would be for the TRA to only take parent complaints forward unless they had first demonstrated they had been through the School’s complaints procedure.
The TRA’s CEO hides behind his organisation’s processes – refuses to acknowledge he/his organisation is a draw for vindicate parents who wish to create havoc and he is oblivious to the untold misery piled on falsely accused teachers, not to mention the wasted time and cost School’s are incurring having to support wrongly accused staff
Some parents are just spoilt, entitled brats, just like their very child, who side with their child no matter what the evidence says. That said, some HoYs and SLT automatically BELIEVE allegations without probing the pupil in any meaningful way. They are so easily “played” by vindictive pupils whose reason for complaining about a teacher may simply come from getting a WELL-DESERVED detention! I have never known a pupil whose complaint has been proven false (which for me necessarily means it’s MALICIOUS too) to be punished either. The tendency for MLT and SLT to side with pupils comes from the matter of pupil safeguarding. But disciplining a teacher effectively for justifiably giving a pupil a detention doesn’t amount to safeguarding. It amounts to STUPIDITY. Disclaimer: I have reported my own views and my own experiences as a teacher of 14 years.